Previews

Lost Empire: Immortals

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Hands-off approach to empire management may not work for everyone.

We've been known to enjoy our share of 4X games (a reference to the four key activities of expanding, exploring, exploiting and exterminating), but they can get bogged down in micromanagement pretty frequently. In Lost Empire: Immortals, however, developer Pollux is making an effort to minimize the messing with minutiae that this style of game is prone to. Taking a step back and looking at the big picture, Immortals focuses on the broader aspects of conquering a galaxy, so rather than busy yourself with individual colonies, you'll set policy for entire star systems in what we think could be an innovative approach.

Bird's Eye View

Set in a universe in which two essentially immortal creatures ("Eonians") named Enais and Bythos are attempting to regain a foothold, you play as the leader of one of six races. As you might expect, each race has their own special attributes and even a particularly sweet racial bonus; the Tritons, for example, can regenerate their ships' hulls. Like most 4X games, however, it's up to you to decide what kind of playing field the game will occur in because you can choose to play in a tiny galaxy consisting of a paltry 200 stars all the way up to a huge galaxy packing about 5000 stars.

Where things get interesting is in the approach to conquering the galaxy. You won't have to worry about individual colonies as Lost Empire: Immortals focuses on managing your empire on the star system level, rather than fussing with individual planets. Essentially, when unopposed, you can take over an entire system just by dropping a colony ship, which allows you to choose what kind of colony you want (trade, production, food or mining). Then the entire system is put to work for you, churning out whichever resource you choose. Of course, some systems are better at producing resources than others, so you'll probably want to cram a mining colony into a star system with a high mining rating.